Co-operation between WHO, the Council of Europe and the European Union in support of patients' rights would be further enhanced by action taken as a result of this Consultation. Consistency of policy positions, co-ordinated strategies of implementation and an understanding of how their respective resources and competence can best be used are essential components of a sustained European movement to promote and protect the rights of patients and their professional providers and advisers. International NGOs also have a critical role to play in prornoting the rights of patients. The forthcoming WHO Region'al Conference on Health Policy will provide an important opportunity for further promoting patients' rights in Europe. The proposed WHO Regional Conference on Health Care Systems in Transition in Europe, to be held in Vienna in 1996, will also explore issues concerning the rights, roles and responsibilities of both patients and providers. We propose to WHO that the Regional Office should establish an appropriate mechanisin to monitor developments in countries and to present the findings to the Vienna Conference. PRINCIPLES OF THE RIGHTS OF PATIENTS IN EUROPE: A COMMON FRAMEWORK INTRODUCTION 1. BACKGROUND Social, economic, cultural, ethical and political developments have given rise to a movement in Europe towards the fuller elaboration and fulfilment of the rights of patients. New and more positive concepts of patients' rights have been advocated. In part, this has been a reflection of the central place given both to full implementation of the concept of respect for persons and to equity in health as a policy objective in Member States. As a consequence there is now greater emphasis on the encouragement of individual choice and the opportunity to exercise it freely, and the commitment to build mechanisms for ensuring quality of care. Developments within health care systems such as their increasing complexity, the fact that medical practice has become more hazardous and in many cases more impersonal and inhumane, often involving bureaucracy, and no less the progress made in medical and health science and technology have all placed new emphasis on the importance of recognizing the individual's right to self-detemination and often on the need to reformulate guarantees of other rights of patients. stupsertod stup5site